


burial

by envysparkler



Series: Pavor [10]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Buried Alive, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28090929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/envysparkler/pseuds/envysparkler
Summary: Jason doesn’t remember how he came back to life until he gets hit with fear toxin.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Series: Pavor [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932523
Comments: 78
Kudos: 739





	burial

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *tries to create a plot*
> 
> My brain: wHaT iF yOu AdDeD fEaR tOxIn?
> 
> Me: I hate you.

Jason fought off the trickle of unease as he headed deeper into the basement. The corridor was getting narrower, and in the shadowed darkness, it felt like the walls were pressing in.

He tried to ignore it. There was more than enough space for him to walk. Hell, there was enough space for _Batman_ to stand next to him, shoulder to shoulder. He could move freely, he had no idea why his breaths were coming faster and shallower.

He used to love hiding away in small, enclosed spaces, where no one could ever stumble upon him. He’d spent a good portion of his Robin tenure crawling through vents. But ever since he’d come back, he couldn’t even close the door on the closet without hovering on the edge of a panic attack.

He didn’t understand it. Dying had come with some strange side effects, and one of them was the inability to walk down this corridor without feeling like his skin was crawling.

Shouts echoed down the stairs after him, and Jason inwardly cursed, darting further into the darkness. Booted footsteps followed after and Jason fumbled in the shadows, a hand pressed to the wall, to find somewhere to hide.

He was down to one gun, having been grossly unprepared for encountering a building full of thugs on what was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance, and he had successfully avoided the Bats for nearly a full month, he didn’t want the series of lectures if he ended up shooting his way out.

His hand found a doorknob, the footsteps were getting closer, and Jason turned the knob and slipped inside before the thugs caught him.

The door closed with a soft _click_. Jason tested the knob twice to make sure it didn’t lock, and then went still as footsteps and low murmurs headed closer. The flickering light of a flashlight shined through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Jason took a step back and readied his gun.

His back hit the wall.

His heart felt like it was being squeezed through a vice, his stomach hollowing out as something attempted to crawl up his throat. His skin prickled, like a thousand fingernails were scraping along his arms, and Jason slammed a hand over his mouth to muffle the high, panicked breaths.

_Just a closet_ , Jason reminded himself as the footsteps passed him, continuing down the corridor, _the door isn’t locked_. He wasn’t trapped. He _wasn’t_. Everything was fine.

The footsteps paused, five feet away. Jason ignored the blood pounding in his ears and strained to listen.

“He’s not here,” someone snarled.

“He came this way,” someone else grumbled, “He has to be here somewhere.”

They sounded annoyed. Probably because he’d blown up twenty kilos of product when he ditched his helmet. Hovering on the edge of hyperventilation, Jason grinned.

“The best way to catch a rat –” something clattered on the ground with a low hiss – “is to flush them out.”

Hasty footsteps pounded outside the door, heading back the way they’d come, accompanied by the growing hiss, like an angry snake.

Or gas escaping a metal canister.

Jason didn’t carry a rebreather. He hadn’t seen the point, not when he’d designed his helmet with state-of-the-art air filters.

It was now occurring to him that that was a dangerous oversight.

They were trying to find him, so presumably the gas wasn’t lethal. It was a faint hope, but it was the only one Jason had – he couldn’t stop his fast, shallow breaths, or the rise in his heart rate, or the heavy, pressing urge that _something was seriously wrong_.

His fingers met wood.

No. No. _Nonononono_ –

He couldn’t breathe. The air tasted stale and musty, like it had been still for a long, long time.

There was no space. His arms hit the door when he tried to stretch them out, and the walls on either side. He was trapped.

He didn’t know where he was. He was alone and it was dark and he was _trapped_ and _he couldn’t breathe_ and he hit the wood harder and harder and _harder_ until he finally broke through.

The smell of mud. Dirt, trickling down. A slow, growing realization, too awful to contemplate, and he suppressed it in favor of clawing forward.

Dirt, all around him, and he was choking and pushing forward, his heart racing and his head pounding, filled with nothing but the panicked, desperate desire to _get out_ –

He broke through the surface. A great, gasping breath. Rain pattering down on his face.

He looked up, and saw his own headstone.

_No,_ he thought in distant horror _, no_ –

He was surrounded. He was trapped. There was something heavy and solid in front of him, and he hit it hard, not stopping until it cracked underneath his flailing punches.

Dirt, sprinkling down like sand. Something tight squeezing his heart, _no please no_ , but he didn’t take any time for the realization to settle.

Clawing up, pushing up, forcing himself forward because he wasn’t going to die here, he wasn’t going to die _again_ –

Air, sweet air. Heavy rain. A gleaming statue of an angel, leaning down.

He closed his eyes and –

Opened them to darkness.

“No,” he breathed out, and then again, louder, “No!”

Heavy and solid – well-made, of course it was, Bruce Wayne couldn’t spring for anything but the best for his dead son – and it wasn’t breaking under his fingers, he could feel something cracking and he bit down on the sob.

“Someone!” he shouted, his voice raw, “ _Please_!”

But he was underground. No one could hear him. No one would come.

He curled broken fingers and _punched_ and exhaled on a cry as wood splintered. Dirt spilled down, that awful, awful smell stuck in his nose, and he reached out blindly, tears streaming down his face as he pushed up.

_Get out_ , he had to get out, that was the only thing running through his head as he clawed himself forward, ignoring the dirt crawling down his nose and choking him as he tried to hold his breath with his lungs squeezing in his chest.

His fingers curled in a patch of no resistance. His head broke the surface. He took one, desperate, wet breath –

“I can’t,” Jason sobbed, tiring muscles turning his strikes uncoordinated and weak, “Please, I can’t, not again –”

Trapped. He was trapped. He couldn’t get out, he couldn’t escape –

His coffin. He couldn’t escape his _coffin_.

“Please,” Jason begged, but the dead couldn’t hear.

He choked down the scream and forced his arms to work, punching out again and again and ignoring the agony pulsing up his arms, because no one was coming for him, because he was _dead_ and if he didn’t get out of here, he’d die all over again.

Dirt. Mud forcing its way down his throat. Surrounded by earth on all sides and having the terrifying thought that his legs would fail him here, that they’d give out and he’d die choking on dirt a foot from his salvation –

Air. Wind. Rain. One breath, two, three –

Darkness. Heavy, solid walls on all sides. He beat on the lid once, twice, before his arms failed him.

“Bruce,” Jason choked out, terrified and wishing desperately for Batman to come and save the day. “Dad, _please_.”

But Batman hadn’t come.

Bruce had put him here.

He was alone and lost and no one was coming.

His fingers splayed against the wood before they slid off.

Jason closed his eyes and pretended he couldn’t taste his own death.

He couldn’t breathe.

“– Hood, can you hear –”

“– hit with something –”

“– Jason? Jay? –”

“– crying –”

“– nonresponsive –”

“– broken fingers, metacarpals, maybe –”

“– don’t understand –”

“– to the Cave –”

A dying, delirious dream as the oxygen deprivation started getting to him – a pointed cowl staring at him, arms tight around him, hands cupping his face.

“Jay?” Bruce said quietly, and Jason let the hallucination take him.

“Dad,” he croaked out, and closed his eyes.

* * *

He would open his eyes to darkness, to his coffin, to clawing his way out of his own grave, and why had he never questioned Talia on how he’d come back to life, why had he never bothered to wonder why the smell of wet mud tasted like suffocation or tight spaces felt like vices around his ribs?

Light. Low and dim, but there was _light_ around him.

It wasn’t cold. It was warm, emanating from the arm slung on top of him, and Jason slowly blinked, waiting for the image to waver and return to darkness and wood and –

“Jason? Jay?” Quiet and frantic, hands curling around his shoulders and Jason looked up to meet worried blue eyes and a crinkled forehead.

“You have grey in your hair,” Jason said, surprised, his tongue disconnecting from his brain. He…hadn’t seen it before.

Of course, he hadn’t seen Batman without his cowl in a long, long time.

“Yes?” Bruce blinked down at him, confused, “How are you feeling?”

Jason ignored the question in lieu of glancing around his surroundings. Warm, muted light diffused through the room, coming from the corner, and he was on a bed, Bruce hovering half on top of him.

His hands were wrapped in casts, both of them, and if he concentrated, he could feel the dull throbbing.

His attention was distracted, though, by the room.

Muted colors, silk sheets, a bed larger than any bed really had the right to be, and Bruce hadn’t even changed the generic flower paintings on the walls.

At least Jason had a clear and visible sign that he was still seeing things – there was absolutely no way he should be waking up in Bruce’s room, tucked into the same bed he’d always crawled into after a bad nightmare, with the man himself looking at him in concern.

“Jason? Jason, please calm down –”

Jason shook his head roughly, squeezing his eyes shut and taking fluttery breaths as he waited for it to turn awful and monstrous and terrifying.

“Jason?” Bruce sounded _worried_ and it wasn’t fair, he didn’t have the right to sound like that, not while saying _his_ name, and Jason was hard-pressed to say whether this or the coffin had been a worse nightmare.

“Jay-lad?” Soft and hesitant. Jason couldn’t choke down the sob.

“Don’t,” he stuttered, his breathing hitched, “Don’t call me that, you’re not real, _stop_ –”

“Jason, I’m real. I’m here.” Warm hands cupping his face and cradling him against a broad chest as tears slipped down his cheeks. “I’m here, Jay, this is real.”

“No,” Jason said weakly, feeling the steady heartbeat pulsing against his ear, “No, you can’t – he hates me –”

The sound was choked and pained, a shocked, bitten-off gasp. “No,” Bruce said fiercely, “No, you’re my _son_ , I could never hate you, Jay.”

Jason slowly cracked his eyes open.

Bruce was looking down at him, worried lines bracketing his eyes, and, for a second, Jason was fifteen again, fifteen and curling up next to his father after an ill-advised horror movie marathon.

It wasn’t real. Jason knew that, and it _ached_ , tearing at wounds that had never quite healed.

It wasn’t real, but he could pretend. He could feel Bruce’s fingers carding through his hair as he settled back against him, closing his eyes and letting the exhaustion pull him down.

It wasn’t real, but he could pretend. Just for a moment.

**Author's Note:**

> The next time Jason wakes up, he is considerably more alert and also covered by his siblings. He still flatly refuses to believe that it’s real. The batkids make a game out of finding ever more ridiculous ways to convince Jason that he’s not dreaming.
> 
> Jason realizes he’s not hallucinating after Alfred brings him breakfast, but he keeps quiet and watches with internal snickering as Tim and Damian join forces in an attempt to find something so crazy that Jason couldn’t even imagine dreaming it up himself. This plan is hobbled by the fact that Tim and Damian cannot agree on anything.
> 
> Cass just pinches him. Steph punches him in the same spot. Dick takes advantage of the situation to trap Jason in cuddles that he can’t decline without revealing that he knows it’s real.


End file.
